Oz wine trail amid lots of cricket!

Updated: 01 February 2008 06:36 IST

Australia has over 58 prominent wine-growing regions producing thousands of varieties of wine.

Written by Anasuya Mathur

Read Time: 2 mins

Adelaide:

Australia has over 58 prominent wine-growing regions producing thousands of varieties of wine. A wine discovery journey across Australia would require us to travel several thousand miles over many days.

However, there is another way to taste and discover the many famous and not-so-famous Australian wines at the National Wine Centre in Adelaide - Australia's wine capital.

The National Wine Centre in Adelaide, a virtual trail across Australia's vineyards, tells you about Australia's rich wine history through several interesting displays from a map displaying all the wine-growing regions to the different sorts of grapes that produce these wines to a glass display of labels showing Australia's vintage collection.

An interactive feature even allows you to make your own wine and we proved our winemaking skills when we put together a gold medal-winning Chardonnay!

The virtual trail over we decided to get a taste of the real thing from Erin who picked out five of Australia's best from winemaking regions across the country.

She also presented the Nightlands from Tasmania, a nice light white wine.

"Australia's export market is growing and Australian wine especially South Australian wine is renowned, and the reason Adelaide is Australia's wine capital is because in such a small region we have so many different kinds of temperature and climate and therefore produce many different kinds of world-famous wines," said Erin, National Wine Centre.

And if there was any doubt of that, take a look at this cellar, which stocks over 14,000 bottles of Australian wine from the Margaret River in Western Australia to the Yarra Valley all the way east in the state of Victoria.

So touring with the Indian cricket team has taken us to various cities across Australia where we've had the opportunity to sample many different region-specific wines.

And for the places we may not get to visit, we're going to taste the wines right here and now.